Oakland County outlook forecasts 42,000 jobs through 2015

University of Michigan economists predict Oakland County businesses will add 42,000 jobs through 2015, reversing disastrous job losses of more than 160,000 during the first decade of the century that peaked in 2009 when 60,000 jobs vanished.

George Fulton and Donald Grimes say job growth will be 11,600 this year, 13,300 in 2014 and 16,700 in 2015.

The economists said businesses added 48,000 jobs in 2011 and 2012, the county’s best back-to-back years since 1994 and 1995.

Advertisement

But even with job growth through 2,015, the recovery since 2009 will only account for 62 percent of the jobs lost between 2000 and 2009.

“Oakland’s recovery is becoming as remarkable as the retrenchment that preceded it,” Fulton said in an embargoed statement before the release of their report at 10:30 a.m. and their presentation to a crowd of nearly 600 at noon in Troy.

“Since the recession’s low point at the end of 2009, the recovery has been red-hot with a growth rate averaging 3.8 percent per year in 2011 and 2012,” Fulton said. “We see the continuation of a solid recovery through 2015, extending its span to six years, but with job growth moderating from its sizzling pace of the past two years.”

The economists said the growth of high-wage industries with pay of more than $62,000 accounted for more than half the growth.

“That the past two years were special is reinforced by the finding that private-sector job gains well exceeded what they averaged per year over the 1980-2000 period, prior to the extended weakness of the 2000s,” Fulton said.

Fulton and Grimes predict 35,000 jobs will be added in the service sector the next three years, with 15,500 of them in professional and business services, 5,300 in health services, 5,300 in wholesale and retail trade, 4,100 in leisure and hospitality, and 2,300 in finance, insurance and real estate.

Professional and business services growth will be in engineering, employment services, computer systems design, corporation and management, and testing laboratories, they said.

Manufacturing and construction is expected to add 4,100 jobs over the next three years, with 1,400 in auto manufacturing and 2,700 in construction.

Automakers have rebounded since the bankruptcies in 2009 of General Motors and Chrysler, and the growth of construction jobs indicates a recovering real estate sector.

“Within the construction industry, most of the job gains are the result of increased residential construction activity, while industrial and commercial construction improves at a more modest pace,” Grimes said.

The government sectors, including public education, continues to shed jobs, but job losses will slow before 200 are added in 2015, they predict.